If you’re keeping up with me at all, you probably have the correct feeling that I don’t place a whole lot of faith in the media, social media, uncredited sources, non-authority figures, or even authority figures.

Yep.  I pretty much live under the assumption that everyone is lying, miscommunicating (willfully or otherwise), don’t care enough to repeat or research the truth, or just simply don’t understand.

That’s what second opinions are for…. and sometimes third opinions.  And credible sources… and back-up for those sources.

I do my very best to imbue my students with this It’s also why it’s exceedingly important to keep the lines of communication open and take the time to research and actually think about information before just simply accepting it.

I don’t think I get that across very well.   It’s not because people are trusting souls, but that can take a lot of work.  It can be frustrating and they may not like what they find out.    It’s far easier to take the path of water — least resistance — and blindly accept information as truth.

I guess it’s just generally easier to accept and then to actually check everything out – except for when it’s not.   After all, most of our media seems to run on constant intentional and otherwise misunderstandings.    Should something be wrong and found out that it’s wrong, it’s retracted in really tiny print over a week later — well past the time people stopped caring or accepted the lie and had formed personal opinions about it, developed a stance, and have discussed with friends.    –

That last bit is important.   No one likes to feel that they were taken for a ride.    Admitting that personal opinion is built around a lie is hurtful.    Better to sweep it under the rug, right?

Flipping all this around, an average person tends to think that just about anyone is a trusted source of information.    This could be friends, family, doctors, or even police officers.    Some of these I understand.   We’re generally taught to trust doctors and police officers.   They’re supposed to help us when we’re in need.  If they’re there to help, certainly they wouldn’t lie, fake, or misalign the truth.

What I don’t understand is why people trust celebrities.  They make a life of attempting to amuse and are paid insane amounts of money to do so.  Singers… actors… comedians…  Rarely, some may come across a couple of grains of raw truth —  I’m thinking of Robin Williams and George Carlin, but those are very rare and far between.

Rather, celebrities are there to entertain and, of course, to make money.
It’s that simple.

Eventually, they may roll into helping charities, donating to the poor, and whatnot.    Good on them.   It shows that they’re human and possibly looking for tax writeoffs.

But, in no way should they be taken completely seriously — which some people do.    And, unfortunately, even if people don’t, celebrities like to think they do, post propaganda, and somewhat pretend to be outraged.   For some reason, they forget that they entertain.   A big part of entertaining is lying.

Some of them lie quite well.
Maybe it just becomes ingrained in their personality.

I’m getting seriously way off track here.

—————–   Super seriously way off track.   I started working on this two days ago and my thought train has left the station.

Short version.

We know from the news that the Amazon Rainforest is being burnt and torn asunder by fires and a Brazil government that encourages farming.   Not that that’s bad… farming is good, but the uncontrollable fires are pretty bad.

..   Got distracted again.

Short, short, version.

(some) Celebrities = champion of causes even if they’re not too sure what the causes are or have a detailed in-depth knowledge of what the heck is going on.    They’re also a bit lazy or, rather, the person who handles their social media is lazy.

Global warming has been a ‘hot’ topic (Ha!  pathetic funny.   Global warming… hot topic…)  and the deforestation of the Amazon Forest fits right into that whole social/global outrage.

Celebrities are outraged.  Apparently, they’re so outraged that they take to Twitter and other social media outlets to post pictures of fires that happened anytime between 20 and 5 years ago.

Top of that, other celebrities use the same pictures that another celebrity used.   So, they’re re-tweeting the same misleading information.

Oh, but how can it be misleading?
A fire is a fire, right?  The Amazon is burning.  Who cares when the picture was taken.

Well, in theory, some people look to celebrities for guidance.   Some people trust celebrities although they make money by entertaining and, essentially, lying to us.

Normal people are believing what the celebrities post with little to no questioning.  It’s kind of like a deep fake without the effort.

What if Madonna posted a picture of a fireball hitting New York with a not so witty tag line like…   the big apple is roasted tonight!

How many people are going to call their friends and family in New York to see if they’re okay?  How many will just believe without researching it?    For something like that, we’d think that there would be something immediately on the news… but what if there was some sort of cover-up?   Rather true or not, someone is going to believe there’s a potential cover-up.

We all wanted to be part of The Lone Gunman in X-Files, right?

Anyway, blind acceptance from a celebrity is just… stupid.   Crazy.  But yet it’s done because they have more money.   Apparently, more money equates to greater credibility.

Celebrities who support a cause but lack the ability (or intelligence) enough to provide current information should be ashamed.   If the celebrity can’t be bothered to actually find current information, how do they even know that their outrage is well-placed?   How do they know they’re not being misinformed?

Well, they don’t.

Does a lie from celebrity + lie to 540000 Twitter followers = the truth?

I don’t know.   I’m sleepy.  Good night.

https://www.france24.com/en/20190823-amazon-fires-how-celebrities-are-spreading-disinformation